I love this picture of Clara.
She looks so tiny and delicate in Steve’s hands.
13 November 2007

I feel overwhelmed by my own life.  But how can you feel overwhelmed by your own life?  Aren’t you the one in charge?  Don’t you dictate the schedule?

Apparently not.

The baby continues to be hard work.  Lily, however, is just a dream right now.  She is being so sweet and adorable.  But anyways, back to the challenges:  we also have Thanksgiving at our house coming up.  And then we have the trip to England for Christmas.

Wait a minute.  It’s the holidays!  Of course I’m feeling stressed and overwhelmed!  Okay, I understand now.  It’s just the holidays. 😉

The kids at the park
13 November 2007

I f**kin’ hate MySpace.  I can’t wait until that little pit of hell implodes on itself.  Or until a better social networking site comes along that doesn’t generate busy, annoying, counter-intuitive, ugly webpages.  Oh, and this dream social networking site of mine would not allow loud, irritating songs to play instantly when you open the user’s page.  I have never seen such bad web design ever as I see on every MySpace page I visit.

I don’t blame the users; I blame the evil of MySpace that is its crappy engine.  It generates those blinding, useless, confusing, and, once again, ugly and annoying pages.

Okay, I’m done ranting.  I have to use MySpace because it is so ubiquitous.  So, of course, several of my family members have MySpace pages.  Just recently Ben created a MySpace page, and I was forced to navigate the bog waters of that site again.

Bleh.

Daddy and Damian
Surfside Beach, Texas
03 November 2007

I have a small blog…. a very small blog.  If you look at the Google PageRank bar, there is not one pixel of color in it.  I have maybe 10 family and friends who visit to read what’s going on in my life, and this number includes my husband.  And yet, my insignificant blog gets spam.  In fact, it gets so much spam, I had to install that little word-test thing (or, for the more technically savvy, a “captcha” test).  I was getting hundreds of spam comments before I installed this.  Hundreds.  To my insignificant nothing blog.

Now, as if that was not interesting enough, the story doesn’t end there.  I still get about 25 spam comments each week.  That means that somewhere out there in the world, it is somebody’s job to add spam comments to blogs.  The captcha test is created so a spambot can’t pass it; a human is required.  Does spam generate that much money that underlings can be hired?

And here’s the last interesting bit to the story: the blog entry that is always — every time — hit for comment spam is “Zen and the art of underwear shopping.”  Maybe if I hadn’t used the word “underwear” in any of my blog titles, I wouldn’t be getting any spam.

I love this photo because Matt’s expression
is such a picture. Just a little more sleep….
Just a little….
28 October 2007

I don’t want to go to bed.  I don’t want the night to end.  You see, in the morning, I will wake up and have to take care of two small children again and cook food again and clean house again and all the current responsibilities that dominate my life right now will become priority again.

But, in the night, I get to do what I want to do.  Matt and I just finished the third season of The Office on DVD.  We ate a pint of ice cream… each.  Like a good daddy and provider, he finally called it quits at 2am, saying that he had to be up in four hours to go to work.

And, after this blog entry, I’ll crawl into bed as well.  I need a decent night’s sleep so that I can be patient with the children and a good mommy.  But for a little while tonight, we indulged.

Being a parent is not easy, and I’ll tell you why.  I’ll tell you the number one reason why being a parent is such a difficult task:  the children always come first.  Video games, hobbies, web surfing, movie watching, blogging… any self-interested activity is shelved.  You are shelved.  The children take center stage, not only in their own life but in yours as well.

I think this is true only for small children.  I don’t know.  I’ve never parented a child older than 3-years-old (Lily’s current age).  I think you regain time for yourself as they get older.  But, as parents of two preschool children, the middle of the night is the only time that Matt and I can claim as our own.

On a completely separate note, Matt and I think that the cutest couple at Dunder-Mifflin: Scranton Branch is Dwight and Angela.  They are actually really cute together.  That is a funny funny show.  Now I have two DVDs of the third season of Project Runway waiting for me.  Yeah!!!  🙂

Papa, the master babysitter, watching
Transformers with the kids.
10 November 2007

My most recent discovery:  if you write a blog entry in the middle of the night during “that time of the month,” it tends to be melancholy and dramatic.

Uncle Steve and Damian
Surfside Beach, Texas
04 November 2007

It is in our very nature to take on guilt.  Through empathy, we feel the pain we have caused others and the guilt becomes our life companion.

And from guilt, we inflict self-punishment.  The problem is, when you are your own judge — the warden to your own self-imposed prison — the punishment never ends.  We rarely show mercy to ourselves.

When I am punishing Lily for hitting her little brother, I send her to her room, and when she comes out, I remind her that we don’t hit people, and the incident is over.  I take pity on her.  We take pity on most people who are careless or selfish or cruel, especially once they have realized the pain they have inflicted on others through their actions.

But we can’t seem to do that for ourselves.  How do you forgive yourself?  When does the punishment end?  When does the pain of empathy stop?

How do you change the past?  And if you could, would you?

My Dad having his morning coffee in Surfside.
We had an excellent time in Surfside this past weekend
with both my family and Donna’s family.
04 November 2007

I’ve been listening to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People while on the elliptical at the gym.  Did you get that picture in your mind?  Here, let me paint it again.  I have finished doing the weights (or “resistance training” for the physically-inclined out there), and I have moved onto my cardio workout on the elliptical — the elliptical being like a new and improved treadmill.  I have my iPod on with its little lime green earbuds in my ears, and I’m listening to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

If you saw me at the gym, I would seem like the caricature that is portrayed in movies of the win-at-any-cost businessman.

And yet, the thing is, I’m not that at all.  Our house is a mess.  I’m in my housecoat as I write this.  I just happen to work out, and that book is quite good.  I’m enjoying it immensely.  Stephen Covey hasn’t started talking about habits yet; I’m on the bit where he is discussing a paradigm shift.

Anyways, if you took a snapshot in time of me on the elliptical listening to that book, you would have entirely the wrong image of me.  Interesting, huh?

If I had to pick a snapshot to define myself, I would probably pick this one:

The Woodings Family
Christmas 2006

There is still so much of me that is not in that picture, but it shows what brings me joy daily. That’s Damian in my belly, so he’s in the picture too. 😉

The baby and I snuggled together
on a chilly October morning.
31 October 2007

Since English seems to be the new… well… English, I’ve been experimenting with accents.  Here is a sample (you have to click the play button twice):

I keep writing snippets of non-existent novels and playing with voices.

Now, here’s the bizarre thing: I realize that I will be dead in an extremely short time in the grand scheme of things.  The memory of my existence and all I did will become nothing within the enormity of time and space.  And yet, even with this knowledge, I am still hesitant to create anything.  I am still filled with fear that I will seem ridiculous… you know, as one deserving ridicule.

One of my favorite sayings comes from Virgil, the wise chicken in Mighty Max.  Max learns that Norman, his protector, is afraid of spiders, and is completely surprised because Norman has never shown fear of anything.  Max says to Virgil, “I always thought Norman was so brave.”  And Virgil replies, “Bravery is not lack of fear; it is acting in spite of fear.”

Creativity is not lack of fear; it is creating in spite of fear.

Piglet and Snow White
Halloween 2007
31 October 2007

We had a really excellent Halloween this year.  We spent the evening with our friends, Ray and Leslie (Ray married us) and their two children.  We went trick-or-treating, ate excellent cheese, and caught up with each other’s lives.  We all had a really good time.

Our baby is already asleep.  Lily and I have already eaten way too much candy.  And we’re watching the latest trailer for The Golden Compass (we all really want to see this movie) before we brush our teeth and go to bed.

Good night, all.  And Happy Halloween. 🙂

Our adorable, amazing, perfect baby.
He’s almost 10-months-old now.
28 October 2007

Did I mention that I love love love this DIY planner website?  I’m a planner, a list-maker, a scheduler.  You know how there is “the crazy cat lady?”  Well, I’m the “crazy list lady.”  You can’t hardly turn around in my house without bumping into a list.

So I gathered all my various lists from around the house, and I made a schedule and list of priorities yesterday to put in my lovely DIY planner.  We’ll see how it works.  Schedules and children don’t go together well.  Sure, I may really want to get the breakfast dishes done, but when both children are demanding my attention, well… the dishes have been known to pile up.

But, none the less, full of hope and armed with a daily planner, I’m going to try to follow a loose schedule.  I even set the alarm!  I quit work when I was pregnant with Lily and haven’t set an alarm these past three years except when we are leaving on a trip (we have to drive at ridiculous hours of the morning, like leaving at 4am, because our children hate long car journeys and will scream — literally scream — if they are trapped in the car too long; so we have to travel when they are guaranteed to sleep).  But this morning, my alarm went off at 5am, heralding a new day and a new plan. 🙂

However, while making my schedule, I realized that there was no room for podcasting or sewing.  Shoot, there isn’t even room to keep the house completely clean at the moment.  The children require too much time right now.  So my hobbies have to wait a bit longer.  I sure do miss my hobbies though.  Just a bit longer… hopefully… just a bit longer…

On an entirely different subject, Matt stayed up late last night to make my playgroup a homemade chicken pot pie.  We are having our Halloween party today, and everyone is supposed to bring a dish.  Matt, being the super-amazing-mega-sweetie that he is, is treating all of us moms with his very yummy chicken pie.